Must be Dreaming
by breadsticks
Summary: Tsuna is a tomato and Spanner picks him up. Yaoi-AU, SupaTsuna.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Not mine.

0101010

Tsuna ran through the corridor, dozens of doors on either side of him.

He turned a sharp corner and hit carpet.

And the colors from the carpet splashed high into the air as his feet sunk and then his legs kept swinging through the rage of paint. Droplets of Prussian blue and Mandarin orange flicked into the air in crowns of liquid around him as he reached out an outstretched hand to the person on the last door. He hung there, poised in the middle of a tornado of color, desperate and _crying_. The floor swallowed him whole then, one giant gulp as quick as a camera snap.

Spanner rubbed his tired eyes and stared again. The elegant Persian carpet lay on the solid tiles of the corridor. The storm raged outside the windows. He must have been more tired than he thought. He closed the door, resigned.

0101010

"I keep having these dreams," Spanner said, chewing on his nails. He'd given up smoking and now often chewed things to compensate. His fingernails, lollipops, and ballpens all attested to his aggravation lately.

"Uh-huh, what kind of dreams?" Irie said while typing in the next cubicle as his co-worker, Spanner, lounged on the wall between them. He kept his attention divided between the financial report he was typing and his 'newest patient'. But mainly, the thing he was thinking was: Why did everyone treat him like some sort of free-for-all shrink? It was only yesterday that Yamamoto was hanging on his wall, moping at him about his sick dad. Before that, it had been Squalo, their manager, yapping about their VP's bratty attitude.

"I keep dreaming about this perky little brunette being swallowed by floors."

Irie stopped typing. He swiveled around on his chair and pointed an extra expensive ballpen at his padawan. "You are sick. You need actual, official help. Or better, you need to get laid."

Spanner snorted and he disappeared back into his cubicle.

Irie sighed in relief.

Spanner came back, with a new lollipop, his newest addiction. He ripped the wrapper with his teeth, with Irie looking on in awe, and popped the sucker in his mouth. Irie grimaced. How did he do that? He'd tried it before, in the privacy of their floor's restroom stall and had bitten his tongue in the ensuing tangle.

Spanner smirked at him. "So, you think I should go pick me up a cute boyfriend?"

Irie waved his ballpen dismissively at him, "Hell, even a one-night stand." He swiveled back to his computer screen to drown himself in numbers and to avoid anymore psychiatric sessions with his co-workers.

0101010

Spanner sat back on his office chair and stared at his own screen, full of technical plans and drawings. Machines didn't have weird dreams. He scowled at his computer.

0101010

Spanner stared at the shelf of laundry detergents and wondered why the hell there were so many perfumed brands. He didn't want to smell like _lavender_. Where were the originals? He cursed and picked the least offensive, _Ocean Breeze_. It was sort of manly. And the bottle was blue. Granted, it was baby blue but Spanner would shove a screwdriver through anybody who dared to comment on it.

He dumped it in the basket, along with those tissues people put in dryers.

He walked along the aisle and turned to go to the aisle with fruits and vegetables in it. He needed some greens. He'd been watching his foods lately, at the tyrannical command of Doctor Shamal, and had started to balance it to a more nutritious level. His stomach was screaming at the offense and wanted all the grease and fat back. But like all things, Spanner was bull-headed enough to get over it.

He rounded the aisle full of jars of pureed fruit and stopped dead.

He felt his gut go cold.

There, on the pile of red ripe tomatoes, sat a three-inch brunette in a plump tomato costume topped with a green, spiky hat. And it was the brunette from his dreams, lazily swinging his legs on the edge of the scarlet pyramid.

He gave it a dark look. Should he ignore it? Yes, it was safer to do so. Humans weren't three inches high. Robots, maybe. But that was in the far far future. He swung his head just as at the same time the tomato imp swung its gaze from the opposite shelf of wheat bread to the blond. It scrambled up and began to jump up and down in excitement, waving at him.

He tried ignoring the hallucination and picked up eight salad bags. Damn doctors.

Then the little brunette screeched and Spanner swung around, already running to catch the tomato fiend who was tumbling down in an avalanche of fruity vegetables. The little idiot had jumped up and down too much.

Spanner winced, sprawled on the floor littered with bruised tomatoes, but holding the tomato dolt safely in his cupped hand.

Luckily, no one was about in the grocery store to see his little insanity.

It was hugging onto his forefinger, looking up at him with a hero-worshipping expression. It squeaked at him in a high-pitched jabbering tone in gratitude.

0101010

It held the stub of a pencil in its arms and clumsily scrawled the last letter of its name, a, on the paper under its feet. It dropped the pencil then, the tail of the _a _wriggling in a last defeated stroke. The rest of his name shook on the paper in awkward lines and curves but Spanner could read it. Tsuna. Its name was Tsuna.

Spanner nodded and pointed at himself and wondering at his sanity, said, "Spanner."

It nodded solemnly at him and Spanner held in the laughter trying to spill out. It was still in that weird round tomato costume.

Spanner didn't even like tomatoes.

0101010

Spanner's hands flitted over the keyboard on his desk, his eyes glued onto the screen. He was a self-professed workaholic and was using work as an excuse to ignore his vegetable-y guest. His eyes unconsciously peeked to the side and found his heart stopping for the second time.

Tsuna was frantically running in circles, a red pinching little ant sniffing after him. He was already in tears and Spanner found himself interrupting his own work to pick up Tsuna from the chase. Spanner rumbled at his guest, "You're bigger than it. You shouldn't be scared of it."

Tsuna just gave him a helpless look and Spanner sighed at the irony. He lifted Tsuna to his front pocket, home to two chewed out ballpens and the brunette settled in happily, clutching the edge. Granted, his pocket bulged out but Spanner was at home so nobody impertinent was in danger of being shanked with a ratchet.

He then slid a paper underneath the wandering ant and stood up to walk towards the window. He could feel the warmth of the tiny being in his pocket and with full conscious knowledge of that warmth he walked to the window and left the ant outside.

Bigger things didn't often kill those smaller than themselves.

He felt Tsuna rest his head against his chest tiredly. His heart beat a little faster.

0101010

"What do _you_ eat?" Spanner poked the rotund redness of Tsuna who covered his mouth with his hands, giggling. Tsuna, who finally had enough, gripped the poking finger between two stick thin arms and he glared up at the blond engineer.

Spanner stroked his tiny guest again who burst out into peals of laughter. It reminded Spanner of silver jingling bells. The red skin of his guest was surprisingly cool and smooth.

Tsuna furiously pushed away at the insistent teasing finger. He shook a warning finger at Spanner who barked out a laugh.

He stomped in indignation.

Spanner murmured an apology and Tsuna nodded regally. A silly affectionate smile scrunched by restraining teeth appeared on Spanner's face. Tsuna hopped up and down again, trying to catch his attention. He mimed drinking, opening his mouth wide and moving his curled hand up and down towards his mouth.

Spanner's perverted mind began suggesting _other_ things. He choked and flushed as the tomato looked at him curiously and chattered questioningly.

Spanner shook his head and the thoughts out. It was actually pretty logical, now that he thought about it. Tsuna was a tomato. What did he eat? No, it was the wrong question. He drank water. He got a thimble and filled it with drops of water and handed it to Tsuna on his dinner table.

Tsuna looked at him miserably. Even though it was a thimble, it was still like a bucket to the pint-sized Tsuna most likely. Spanner just shrugged. He really didn't have anything else. The tomato sighed and dipped his cupped hands into the thimble and drank from that instead.

0101010

Once upon a time, when there were still spirits who watched over plants and people and animals and places, there lived a young boy by the edge of a farm of corn. His hair was spun like the corn and his keen eyes were as sharp as an eagle. His hands could deftly take machines apart within a few minutes and put them together again in fewer minutes. And then one day, he found a dying plant by the side of the field of sunshine yellow…

Tsuna sat next to a blinking digital alarm clock in the darkness of Spanner's bedroom and thought to himself. The moon outside lit a reflected window on the desk and Tsuna sat on the edge of this, staring down at Spanner who was snoring on the bed. He sounded remarkably like a saw eating at a tree.

It was him, really him. Tsuna hadn't been so sure at the beginning but when Spanner had saved him from that fall…And there was the ant and Spanner hadn't killed it. It really was the little boy. He wiped the few globs of tears leaking out. He'd found the boy and his name was Spanner.

Could he do it, though? Could he really break off all ties to his world for this man? Spanner grunted and his hand grasped at the air ineffectually. Tsuna's heart pounded again, the sappy thing. Tsuna wondered what he was dreaming.

He wondered if Spanner was dreaming about him.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Not mine.

0101010

_To dream of being swallowed can represent being overwhelmed or being unwilling to accept something in real life._

_-The Fortune-Teller told Tsuna._

0101010

It was like drowning.

He found his lungs filled with heavy air and his limbs weighed down by aggravating pressure. He was running through the hallway, the ground rock solid beneath him. It was storming outside, lightning stalking his steps through massive Gothic windows. Doors lined the corridor like soldiers at a march, ready and waiting and silent. Under his gasping breath, he counted the thunder cracks one, two, three…

He turned and then he locked eyes with a weary Spanner and he drew in a bigger breathe, fighting the stillness in the air. He didn't stop running, step after step on the tea-stained tiles. He hit that Persian carpet.

He drowned on air and color and Spanner watched Tsuna fall.

0101010

Say the words, "_I can…" _Or these ones, "_I will..."_ Even this, "_I must..."_

Humans say these words so easily, day to day of their brutally short lives.

But that was magic, in its purest and simplest form. The will to fight, the will to build, and the will to protect…It was something Tsuna envied in humans. In his world…it was unthinkable. To fight against one's own destiny was suicide. There had been no other alternative. And as much as Tsunayoshi would like to deny his roots, it was a fate that could not be denied. He was bound to be the tithe to the dark one.

In a time of drastic changes and heart-rending uncertainty, Tsuna had run to the only anchor he'd ever recognized in his young life. Soft hands and a kind smile…

It would take three days for Tsuna to complete the preparations. On the third day, it would be up to Spanner.

0101010

The alarm beeped loud and clear.

Spanner jerked awake and swore when he saw the time. Though he wasn't late or early, it was just a morning ritual to practice a sailor's mouth at an hour that Spanner secretly suspected of being invented by sadistic managers. It helped to keep in practice his dirty mouth. He then turned to give a slightly calmer greeting to Tsuna and then stopped dead.

There was an ordinary, albeit slightly fat tomato next to his alarm clock. He poked at it, hoping the four stick-thin limbs would sprout out and a bushy head to pop up. It wobbled a bit on the table, but otherwise remained depressingly normal. He thought a bit on this and decided Tsuna might have decided to hibernate. After all, most humans hibernated during this godawful hour.

0101010

Irie had seen many strange things. For example, one of the floor three's office drones, Gokudera, had a secret stash of dynamite materials in his filing cabinets. He kept saying they were just recreational hobbies. Then there was that executive, Fuuta, who could memorize a book line for line in a single hour. Then there was their resident engineering genius, Spanner, his next-door cubicle neighbor who had recently begun talking to a tomato. He'd seen the blond at it, for the past two days. He was starting to worry.

Honestly, it wasn't even the fact that Spanner was talking to an inanimate root vegetable that had him worried, no. After all, several of the officers under manager Hibari often whimpered to various stuffed dolls and photographs. It wasn't exactly something new and exciting to watch.

The fact that Spanner paused between rambling as if he was listening to the tomato… Well, it was a whole different kettle altogether.

He decided to subtly ask his 'patient'.

"So… have you gone absolutely schizoid on us or something?"

Spanner didn't decrease his inhumane typing speed or even turn his head, the bastard, "No, I haven't. Ask me again tomorrow." Beside the blond's computer, there was that damnable tomato. It was still indecently shiny and perky. Even the leaves hadn't wilted yet. It looked as if it was gloating at Irie. He resisted the urge to pounce on it and stab pencils at it.

Screw the indirect line and just go in for the kill, so he said, "So…why exactly is there a root vegetable on your office desk? And I'll add on top of that the question of why it is the same tomato you had yesterday and the day before that?"

Spanner shrugged at him and clicked and clacked his laptop without pause.

"…Can I eat it then?"

As he reached down to take it, Spanner slapped his questing fingers away and grumbled at his co-worker, "You tomato-defiler."

Irie raised an eyebrow, "Geeze, sorry for touching your vegetable." They both stopped and snickered at the joke like a couple of elementary kids. One of their other cubicle-mates, Yamamoto, popped up his head from his side and imparted some words of wisdom to the duo, "You know, it's not a root vegetable. It's a fruit. Very good source of the antioxidant Lycopene." He smiled toothily at them. The reason why he was so obsessively keen on this was because his boyfriend was an Italian who insisted on a diet of tomatoes and pasta _everyday_. He was starting to dream about tomatoes.

"What? …Really?" Irie shook his head. "I kinda always thought it was a vegetable, yeah? I mean, you put it in _salads_."

Spanner and Yamamoto nodded understandingly.

The office clock struck three and warned the various slackers that their vitriolic floor manager was coming in any minute to check up on them.

His two colleagues hurried back to their own work and Spanner swiveled back to his computer screen. He hadn't realized that Irie had been watching him so closely to notice Tsuna. It was making Spanner a bit more paranoid than usual. He glanced down at what had been their topic of discussion and picked it up. He inspected it for any bruises. Irie had been right, in a way.

Why was the root vege—fruit on his desk still an inane unmoving tomato? What had happened to Tsuna …? Was it just a dream, again?

It had been three days already.

0101010

Ten o'clock struck the clock and the tomato was still unquestionably inanimate. He'd long given up on working and was left staring blankly at the fruit. It was past closing time and every one of his co-workers had left. All of the office lights had been turned off, leaving Spanner and his computer to the mercy of his lamp. Even the city lights outside had dimmed down. And Spanner was still in this cubicle, work unfinished and a tomato being an unfeeling vege—fruit.

_Tsk, just when life was becoming interesting_.

Then he looked over through the large glass paneling and frowned at the dark clouds in the horizon of the night sky. Through the gaps between building and building, an immeasurable amount of thick cumulous clouds was flooding the sky, covering what stars were there. And he didn't have an umbrella. What an _incredibly happy _day.

He squinted a bit.

Those clouds…were moving way too fast. He scratched his blond hair and wished he had some cigs on him. Fast clouds…a hurricane? Then the realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He could hear them, a thundery rumble of cawing and cackling. They filled the horizon like a stygian tidal wave. It was some sort of nightmare out of Hitchcock's movies. It was a murder of ravens.

He felt his jaw drop and his survival instincts kicking in.

He curled underneath his desk with Tsuna and the world exploded around him, shards and feathers flying. The mass of ravens then splintered into two, the larger part dispersing to perch around the office; some on chairs, some on the cubicle walls, and many others on computers and plants. The smaller section tunneled into a figure on the floor, like building blocks stacking one atop another to form one mammoth of a construction. It was like a Gestalt illusion and out of a flock of sable birds, a man emerged dressed in a neat black coat, black pin-striped slacks, and a black formal shirt. He tipped his ink colored fedora at Spanner who was clutching at his tomato. The blond noted that even his eyes and hair was completely black, obsidian black. It frankly made him look like a vampire, he thought snidely.

"I think you have…something of mine."

In three seconds, Spanner deduced that this was no time to panic, this man wanted Tsuna, and now, Tsuna wasn't here or wasn't responding. And Tsuna hadn't died, well, because tomatoes couldn't die…But really, the important thing was that this man wanted to take Tsuna away from him. And Spanner…couldn't let that happen, no matter what.

He kicked his office chair upward at the man's face.

It soared in the air and smashed into the calm face of the man in black and he exploded, regressing back into squawking ravens and feathers.

Meanwhile, Spanner was already running towards the stairs.

In the movies, sliding down the stairs via the handrail was a pinch. They were lying. Friction burns, loss of appendage, collision with another action hero poser—these were just a few of the dangers of being gullible and male. Luckily, Spanner was a genius and already knew that galloping down the stairs was a lot easier and beneficial to his plan of disembowelment avoidance.

He could hear the shrieks of those birds and he knew those sharp beaks could tear into soft squishy innards.

The stairs were the wrong battleground, of course. Spanner knew this. It was the birds' natural domain, elevation. They'd easily beat him here. But Spanner didn't intend to stay here long. Long enough for a distraction, maybe. He had about five seconds before the man followed him here and dispersed again to his bird form. Luckily, these stairs winded in a spiral and it was often hard to see down to the very bottom much less see who was scurrying downstairs. And there were doors tucked on every floor from these stairs.

He stopped at two floors down and then jumped in through an open door and closed it quietly. He knelt down just as a streak of shadow swooped down through the tight middle of the spiral stairs.

Success.

He collapsed against the wall and tried to hold down the bile of excitement and adrenaline and panic. Sometimes, he wished being a genius included free muscles and stamina.

He uncurled his fingers from clutching Tsuna. He looked it over. No bruises. Good.

And Tsuna unfolded his arms from the death squeeze he'd had over Spanner's forefinger. He smiled up at Spanner. Without thinking, Spanner lifted his other free hand and stroked Tsuna's chin up the side of his face and lastly to his puffy brown hair. Nudging his finger through the strands of hair, he noted Tsuna's expression of bliss.

The green leafy hat popped off.

He watched Tsuna's eyes widen and there was a vacuum of space and air being sucked in and then Tsuna's face crumpled into a grimace, his cheeks flushing and his eyes closing against a welling of tears. Tsuna got fatter at his stomach and that mass shot up his torso, making him grow taller and taller and bigger. His red tomato body/costume ripped at the skin and his arms shot out into the air, wobbling in the air. His toothpick legs stretched and lengthened to sprawl on and around Spanner's lap. His brunette head ballooned and hit Spanner's nose.

The noise stopped and a stupefied and normal-sized (_Naked_! screamed Spanner's mind) Tsuna stared dazedly at Spanner. There was blood trickling down from the blond's nose.

"…Ah, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I…hit your nose."

Spanner's eyes dilated and only a ring of ice-blue could be seen around large round black pupils. His jaw had yet to come up from the floor.

Tsuna leaned forward, concerned. He touched his forehead against Spanner's sweaty one. The human didn't_ seem _to have a fever. He asked, just to make sure, "…Are you okay?"

While his body wailed for Tsuna to _lean _closer, he was scrambling to pick up his wits about him. Tsuna-tomato was now Tsuna-human. He checked over Tsuna's body to make sure (his brain was on the fritz, yelling 'yes, yes, yes, yes!') there were no extra supernatural plant parts. There were none. And his Tsuna could talk now, too. He could finally interrogate (he dribbled mentally at _how _he could do this) the little sprite. Then his hands twitched and he firmly scolded them for even daring to think about groping now.

For goodness sake, not now when there was a murderous birdman following after them.

And then as if just thinking about birdbrain actually signaled their chaser to their whereabouts, the man in black shattered the door into splinters and flying debris. He strode in, the ends of his coat fluttering as feathers then blending itself to the smooth black fleece. Spanner tightened his hold on Tsuna on his lap just as Tsuna began pushing away with both hands from Spanner's chest, loudly yelping, "R-Reborn!"

Reborn paled when he saw the state Tsuna was in. Then he grew red in fury, rushing forward to pull Tsuna out of Spanner's grasp. "…You disgusting wretch! What have you done to Tsuna?"


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Not mine.

0101010

"R-Reborn, it's not what you think!" Tsuna screamed while trying to shield Spanner with his own body.

With one effortless yank, Reborn jerked Tsunayoshi away from the _disgusting _human.

And before Spanner could even blink, he found himself lifted into the air by his neck, gasping. Wrapped around his thin neck were Reborn's fingers, nails lengthened and veins jutted out like curling vines. He scrabbled at the hand strangling him even as his face turned blue. The raven man's face was frighteningly still now, watching the last breaths of the man before him.

Reborn curled his lip, "Die."

Then Spanner slid his leg into a side kick, aiming at Reborn's unprotected middle. The other man caught it with his other hand and clamped more forcefully on the engineer's neck. Spanner allowed himself an inner smirk even as his vision started to darken.

Tsuna swung the keyboard, face tight with distress.

Reborn felt his intuition kick in and ducked, losing his grip on the human. Spanner dropped to the ground, wheezing, and his vision coming back in spirals. Tsuna dropped to the ground and huddled Spanner behind him as he warily watched his formidable guardian. He was crouched down on the floor, face shadowed underneath his fedora; mounting tension coiling his muscles and corroding even his iron-hard control. Tsuna could feel himself stepping back, cowering and covering Spanner. His teacher snapped forward, quicker than Tsuna's eyes could catch, quicker than the tick of a clock.

Reborn clamped his lean arms around the petrified Tsuna while Spanner had—

"D-don't move," Tsuna whispered evenly.

Behind the blond engineer, were the flock of ravens poised unnaturally still on chairs, cubicle walls, and computers. They were ready for a feast, scavengers the whole lot of them.

Reborn twisted his fingers, crackling bone against bone. Then he gripped Tsuna's face in his left hand; nails digging in, small droplets of blood seeping out. Tsuna had closed his eyes. In low tones, Reborn bit out furiously, "What _else_ did you defile, mortal? After stealing his hat, what else did you _dare_ ransack my Tsuna of?" His fingers smeared the blood on Tsuna's white face, then watching Spanner calculatingly; he leaned down and languorously licked the trail of blood.

He found the wrist of his hand, the one holding Tsuna hostage, in a vise-like grip.

Spanner stared at Reborn, eyes as sharp as broken glass, his mind teetering between the knife-like edge. "…_Stop touching him_."

Reborn's intuition rang loud and clear.

There was a few seconds as Reborn ran assessing eyes over the engineer.

Tsuna tried pushing them apart, gently, cautiously. "R-reborn—"

"Shut your mouth, Tsuna. I know this worthless _bastard_ never did it by force…I would have smelled your blood otherwise."

"T-then why—?" Tsuna asked.

"—It's him, isn't it?" Reborn nodded his head at the human while his eyes drilled into Tsuna's, willing for the truth.

The brown-haired boy cringed and felt an embarrassingly red blush steal over his face, the same shade, in fact, of a tomato. Reborn shook off Spanner's hands wherein Tsuna immediately grasped them, pulling the blond away from the raven. Spanner was trembling, Tsuna noted. Not with fear, no...Tsuna tightened his fingers on the engineer's hands. Reborn didn't handle backtalk well. Especially from a mortal.

Spanner was still shaking, adrenaline flooding his senses.

Reborn watched the pair before him carefully then lifted his fedora off his head. The ravens around them straightened up and took flight, engulfing the three in a spiraling flood of whistling and rustling wings. The sound of the birds in flight was unnaturally loud in Spanner's head. Even though Tsuna held his hand painfully, only one thing filled Spanner's vision. Blood on Tsuna's face. _Blood on his mother's face._

Then they were gone and the building was empty.

0101010

The large rectangular mirror showed a speck growing, growing until the dark mass resolved it to be a torrent of ravens. They hit the surface of the mirror. The mirror rippled and for a few seconds, the birds were still, suspended in motion in the mirror, their wings in different angled positions of flight, their eyes depthless like wells, their beaks open in a cry. The concentric ripples reached the edge of the mirror's wooden frames and pulsed outward in the air like heat waves.

The ravens burst outward from the mirror, shrieking, a solid mass of black feathers in a tornado.

Spanner hit the ground, carpeted with dead brittle leaves, stumbling so that memories of blood tumbled right out of his mind. Around him, the ravens had soared slowly to a stop on several perches on the strangler fig trees around them, tucking tired heads under weary wings. Even with the number of those ravens, those trees seemed to swallow them in its tangled depths of thick roots like the ironwork of birdcages. Small spots of sunlight filtered by dark green leaves lit the floor and Spanner noted the broken-down piano missing some of its ivory keys and the leather couch surrounded by stacks of leather-bound books as old as Sir Lancelot the Lover himself. And the mirror, wooden frame, unremarkable if not for the irrevocable fact that it was hung on pure air above the couch. But with growing alarm, Spanner could only notice one goosebumping detail.

Tsuna was missing.

"Where. Is. Tsuna?" Spanner asked. He was still on edge, even as the gossamer trails of red memories had already left his blond head.

Reborn, who'd landed gracefully on his two feet, glanced at him with unconcerned eyes as he began circling Spanner, like his lice-infested scavengers, "Tsuna is safe. You, however…"

"…Tell me. What would you exchange with me for Tsuna?" said Reborn, ignoring him.

Spanner stilled all his restless movements. The mirror reflected his face, which had gone numb with fury, and the living wall of roots that surrounded him. Control, Spanner thought to himself. Control that damnable rage of yours. Because these woods were Reborn's territory, because Reborn had Tsuna, and because the mirror _didn't_ show Reborn at all standing right next to him... "Tsuna is not a piece of property to be bargained for."

A sliver of a smile appeared briefly in Reborn's face then was gone and once again, Spanner couldn't read him. "And yet, Tsuna is inexplicably mine. Did he never tell you the story then? Why don't I enlighten you of certain facts…"

0101010

This was Tsuna's story and the beginning of it started thus,

_Brown tendrils unfurled in the damp velvet darkness. And it was so, that the plant tentatively reached out, searching and seeking answers the garden could not give. It asked the neighboring gnarled trees but even all their wisdom could not answer this one question. It asked the alabaster statues but even all their intuition could not answer this little plant's question. It whispered pleas to any and all who passed by it._

_What should I live for?_

_Seasons of rain and sun and snow passed by the plant who grew weaker with despondency. Then came the rains from the west and all day for one day, it rained. And a tall bony man with a black fedora on top of his head passed by the garden. He heard the dying plant's silence that pulsed with loneliness like the beat of his own heart._

"_Little plant, little plant. I'll give you a dream, a wondrous dream to live for. It will be full of bluebottle butterflies and sun-drenched air. It will have clear pools of water as cold as glistening ice and it will have tiny fire-red ants marching in neat strict lines. And the grains of the soil will be softer than sand, softer than sleep. It will be a dream, my tender plant, a dream of a life you could have. All I ask is for your first fruit, your first-born."_

_And so saying, the man blew white sand around the plant and it fell into a deep slumber, dreaming._

Reborn finished his tale, ghosting long spidery fingers across the gaps of the piano's mouth. "Do you understand, you walking bag of flesh? He _is_ property. He is my property. And you have…trespassed." Spanner took note of that odd phrase, bag of flesh, while he willed his usual bull-headed control in stopping himself from walking right forward and gutting the self-righteous bastard with a cheap Staples ballpoint pen. Because as much as the words pissed Spanner off, he _had_ heard the strange tone underneath the haughty words.

And it had him relaxing, that not-right tone, off-key with the meaning of the words coming out of his mouth.

And because there was one other thing that had come knocking on Spanner's forehead. Hello, brain, still working? Still have all the necessary oxygen and nutrients? Reborn had practically been frothing furious about the hat. And that could be the tipping point... "I took off his hat first. It means he's mine now, isn't it?" Unbidden, like eerie night fish coming up to the surface of a black pool, the words came, "—_mine to treasure, mine to protect, mine to live for."_

Ravenman started chuckling, humorless and bloodless, of that latter one Spanner did not doubt. Reborn was…he sneered, "So, your nose discerns the hidden truths…like a well-trained dog. Very well. I accept your challenge for the rights of ownership over Tsunayoshi. As I was the first, the original, the benefactor, I call the game."

0101010

_The Scavenger Hunt for the Piano Keys._

"In the woods, he says. All of them lost in the woods he says. Inside the border of the wooden fence, he says—that black-obsessed snobby freak of a half-man half-bird, all stick-in-the-ass." Spanner struggled through the roots of a particularly intimidating cathedral fig tree, looking for _anything. _There had to have been more than twenty ivory keys, at the very least, missing from that pitiful wreck of a piano. And this whole place was pock-full of hiding places and scavenging Nevermore's, eager for a bit of shine and trinket. And anyway, how could one supposedly powerful inhuman being lose a pile of piano keys? They were _attached—_

Spanner remembered those wraithlike fingers, veins bulging like the path of uncanny poison ivy, and the bizarre strength his neck had found in them, like gravity reversed. It was inevitable, the murderous intention in those fingers. If it hadn't been for Tsuna…

And that was it. Spanner knew. Reborn had _ripped_ those piano keys himself.

One by one.

A bluebottle butterfly fluttered past his face. And a whisper of Tsuna's voice in his ear, _Not long now._

The bluebottle led him to a forgotten graveyard hidden deep in the woods. Weatherworn graveyard statues prayed beseechingly to whatever god would listen while faded stone markers and crosses gathered moss and weeds and dandelions around them. And beneath one statue of an angel, on the ground, was freshly turned dirt. Somebody had been digging. Or burying as the case may be.

The strip of glass blue on black flitted to a crying statue's nose, landing on its rounded tip.

Its carved eyes rolled towards Spanner who felt a shiver run up and down his spine. Its thin lips remained open, a mourning howl frozen, but the words crawled into Spanner's ears like scratchy six-legged things, _He deceives you, pulls your strings into knots of snarls and tangled snags. Which one is the lie? Because the best lies have a seed of truth. _A brown cocoon rolled down its tongue, stopping with a click against its lower lip. Through the slit in the ragged shell, black wings blossomed with the strip of bottle blue in the middle. The statue's eyes stopped moving from its focus on Spanner. Two bluebottles now.

Spanner bent down and began digging. What else was he supposed to do? He would have to wait and dig out the truth from the lies.

0101010

He found five of them, aging yellow ivory keys.

The dream climbed into his brain like filmy wispy cobwebs stretching over his vision.

0101010

_This was the beginning._

_A small child, about six maybe five, was stumbling across the grass, walking parallel to the cement road next to him. He was holding his small chubby fingers up, as if expecting someone to take it, all the while, his legs pumped tirelessly over the tickling feel of cattails. A small hidden rock finally tripped him and he flipped over, comically, head over feet. He rolled to a stop, nearing the wooden fence. Fresh blood gleamed on the wooden slats._

_The boy looked up, up above. He cocked his head as if listening. There was a new trail of blood over his face, over the old marks, like a tribal tattoo, a rite of passage into the world of adults. It covered half of his face and had once smothered him but the rest had dried off already. He held up a pale sickly hand, blooming with dark colors. Faintly, indistinctly, the vaporous outline of slender fingers took hold of his._

_The child murmured, "Not long now."_

_He stood up again, holding tight on pure air._


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Not mine.

0101010

Spanner blinked and found half of his fist buried in a statue's body.

Rivulets of blood and alabaster shards ran down the crying angel's side as Spanner gingerly pulled his fist away from it. He looked over his injured hand with bits and chips of stone stuck. He picked each one out, hissing. After he was done, he took off his cotton shirt and ripped it to tie the wound.

Night had already fallen. How long had he smashed his fist into the statue over and over again ever since he'd woken from that dream of lost little boys and ghosts and blood marks? Whatever it had been, it had blown up his usually very calm temper. To think that Tsuna had once been a lost little boy with marks of abuse…

He picked up the five piano keys from the ground and hid them into the pockets of his khakis. Finishing this game would have to do for now.

It would have to do.

It was good advice that Spanner repeated to himself like a mantra as he walked out of the graveyard and followed the two bluebottles. Good advice his older brother had repeated too, after every time he taught Spanner to take a punch and give one back (and if ever their fuck of a father came back, they'd be ready, him and Spanner and their mother). Just keep going forward. Then he saw the bluebottles spinning around a kerosene lantern hanging on a cable running parallel to the path. He unhooked it and followed the pair on the dirt road wounding deeper through the fig trees like trailing a spool of thread in a maze.

Finding the piano keys might be playing into Reborn's game but it was, at the moment, the only thing Spanner could do. To win the scavenger game and piece what information he had about Tsuna and Reborn, information that could later prove vital, he had to keep playing. He had to find conviction in taking action, in moving forward. Though Spanner didn't know it, it was the oldest and the simplest kind of magic. That kind of magic could tilt a world askew on its axis.

Then he felt the first drops of rain and looked up, his eyes growing dimmer.

It wasn't rain.

It was another mirror, full-bodied, hanging on a slight angle over him from the branches. Iridescent liquid pearls of mercury slid down its smooth surface and dripped down onto Spanner's upturned face. Then those butterflies dived right into its surface and Spanner watched his reflection widen his eyes and the mirror closed up around him like a mouth—

0101010

_The Fortune-Teller_

His body felt heavy.

Unbearably, suffocatingly so.

Blue eyes opened to see a blurred copper moon, round as a coin, hovering over the reach of the thick choking fog. Four sloping walls of dove white rose over his vision, framing the centerpiece moon. Spanner's lungs were burning in agony and his mouth opened to comply. Water rushed in and he choked on it. He sat up quickly as he broke through the surface of the water and it spilled over the ceramic sides of the bathtub. Plumes of blood had spread out on the water from his hand. And it was freezing.

Water dripped down his blond hair onto his nose.

He sneezed.

Spanner stood up carefully, aware of the slippery feel of wet ceramic with the water reflecting electric blue veins on his pale shivering skin. He hauled himself out and stared out at the grassy expanse surrounding him with no discernable horizon to strive towards. And the thousand and one mirror shards that littered the area, some glittering at the passing of the moon and some as empty as the hazy mist.

"_Did the bluebottles lead you here?"_

He kept still as he scanned over his surroundings. Nothing. The feminine voice had a faint crystal-like echo that sharpened occasionally into a high soprano. He cleared his throat, uncomfortably, as he could still see no one. "Who's there?"

"_Why don't you look down?"_

Long and layered and diaphanous sea green fins floated inside the mirror shards, beneath his sneakers. He stepped off of them and onto the unoccupied grass. And then the mermaid turned fully to face upwards at him, soft brown hair curling around her fair face. She swam around his feet, passing through the space in between the shards resulting in parts of her vanishing from sight. Like an unfinished puzzle with pieces missing, Spanner thought. She tapped her knuckles against the surface of the glass and blew bubbles at him. _"Boo."_

Having had a few of the finer social skills drilled into him by Irie the self-appointed psychologist, Spanner muttered a hello and not screamed in utter girlish terror. Now that he looked properly, the mirrors weren't reflecting anything at all but showed a murky depthless quality like a…

"_Why did the bluebottles lead you here, to the Shattered Lake?"_

Like a lake.

"I'm…hunting for Reborn's piano keys." He patted at his pockets, found the piano keys from the graveyard, and pulled it out to show her. Then he felt completely childish for doing so and he couldn't even explain to himself why.

"_Closer._" She commanded.

Spanner leaned down on his knees and held the piano key to the surface of the glass with her curious eyes. "Have you seen some of them?"

She nodded regally, her hair floating like an exotic curling crown. _"So, you're Tsuna's young mortal in a game with Mister Reborn. It's been far too long since someone challenged the Lord of all that is lost and hidden." _Here she inclined her head at him, "_I have them—but for a price, as Mister Reborn wills it. Even I, the Fortune-Teller, cannot defy the raven's rules."_

"What price?" Spanner asked, always careful.

Her smile widened. She'd obviously been waiting for him to ask. _"A good dream. Or even a facsimile of a dream, a good story. Why don't you start?"_

Spanner sat down, crossed legged and leaning his back against the cool wall of the bathtub. And as the words of his tale began, soft ghostly smoke poured out of his mouth which drifted down to the mermaid's upturned face. He went on, unperturbed. "Well…My friend Irie told me this one. Once in college, he started finding his grades dropping like flies. No matter how late he studied, no matter how many caffeinated drinks he imbibed, he found all he could scribble in his exam papers, in his essay papers, and in his study notebooks were the words: _Run, run, run as fast as you can. _He broke pencils, he threw ballpens, he even jammed keyboards and all that ever came out of his fingers were those words. His professors, his friends, even all of his family didn't believe him. Imagine, not being able to write anything _but_ one sentence.

Ridiculous.

Finally, out of sheer frustration, he stood up and ran, ran away home, from school, from everything with that single damned sentence running around in his head. After three days of pounding on gravel and cement roads, he was stopped by this old policeman.

_What do you think you're doing all alone?_

Running away, sir.

_Running from what?_

Just…everything.

_That's no good, kid. You'll have to face up to it, sooner or later._

And then with that piece of advice, Irie went back to his parents and confessed he hated medical school. Long after that, when he could write what he meant and mean what he wrote, he became the youngest graduate in his engineering school." Spanner finished as the smoke stopped. Because sooner or later, you had to face up to responsibility, even if that was responsibility for yourself.

The Fortune-Teller laughed, her voice like swinging chimes. _"Very good. An apple for an apple. A story for a story." _So saying, she produced an ivory piano key from her swirling hair and hit the surface of the glass lake with a teeth-rattling _chink_. Spanner covered his ears as even the sound vibrated inside his head, wincing. But it pushed the piano key upward and through the glass and it began her story.

0101010

"_I don't know who did it." The small brown-headed boy had repeated this to the questioning nurse. And he repeated it, again when the doctor asked. They had swaddled him in bandages, given him a mug of hot chocolate, and settled him in an empty white room, save for a bed and a mirror. The raven man sat by him, visible only in that mirror. All the hospital staff that had visited him, the kind nurse and the portly doctor and the other smiling nurse, they had all avoided glancing at that mirror, uneasy by something hidden in the room._

_Finally the raven man approached him and said, "Those bullies won't just go away, you know."_

_He'd ignored the statement even as he sipped the scalding chocolate._

"_So many bruises…At least they had stopped after they had pushed you down those stairs in the isolated park." He reached out to the tightly wrapped bandages around Tsuna's head and tugged a brown spike sprouting from the cap of bandages. It reminded him of tomato leaves and just that thought was enough to curve his thin lips. "But they will be back at that rickety orphanage, waiting." And because Reborn was a little cruel, "…your parents can't ever come back to protect you."_

_Tsuna closed his eyes, a sob swallowed._

_And because Reborn was a little kind as well, he put a comforting hand on Tsuna's small shoulder. He continued. "What will you do now?"_

_The child looked up at him and said, "…I'm tired." And then Tsuna was silent, a graveyard hush that pulsed with the same loneliness that beat in the raven's heart, the same loneliness that beat in all lost things._

_And Reborn finally said, "Little Tsuna, little Tsuna…I'll give you a wondrous dream to live for…" Even as he said this, Tsuna's eyes were already unfocusing drowsily at him. "…all I ask…"_

0101010

The dream ended with white static buzzing out Reborn's last words. The Fortune-Teller had pushed through five piano keys and was turning away to swim further down into the darkness. Before she could leave, Spanner hurriedly called out, "How do I leave?"

"_The same way you came in. By drowning." _Even as the last tips of her tail zipped into the depths of the lake.

Spanner took the five new piano keys she'd left and gave a despondent look in the cold water in the bathtub.

"Shit."

He held his breath and dived in.

0101010

_Keeping Mum_

"All I'm saying, Mr. 72, is that infernal thing is _broken. _Obviously, adding in spare wheels and cogs was a useless endeavor._"_

Another voice answered, unhurried but worried, "But isn't it odd? It's been playing continuously ever since Tsuna—"

"Shut your mouth. You know Mister Reborn has warned us countless of times not to speak of _that _horrible incident." The two voices were silent as they contemplated the even more horrible consequences of Reborn finding their tongues wagging. There was a shudder that went through both voices, still easily definable underneath the aforementioned broken musicbox the grumpy first voice had been complaining about. Each braille point that plucked a tooth on the metal comb in that musicbox extended each lullaby note to an unsettling pitch of glass breaking.

Spanner had woken to find himself further down the path into the denser part of the woods. Having seen lights in the distance, he'd followed with two butterflies in hand. Then he'd encountered those lights in the woods, all of which appeared to be floor lamps spaced erratically throughout these grounds. They were elegant pieces of carved wood with shades running the gamut from dyed linen to stiff cotton to colored glass. He'd walked deeper, following the lamps that clustered closer and closer among the strangler trees. Then he'd heard the voices and the musicbox lullaby underneath their gossip-mongering.

"Still, I don't suppose Mister Reborn would mind terribly if we threw it down the edge…?" Mr. 72's sheepish voice crept out.

"And risk Mister Reborn's claws and afterwards face Tsuna's heartbroken face? No, I don't have that strong of a constitution I'm afraid."

"You're right, of course, Mr. 43." Mr. 72 sighed and continued, "I have to confess that I've always been a bit weak in my knees for human tears. What a novelty, eh? To have rain leaking down one's eyes. It's any wonder they don't blind themselves with all that salt and water."

Mr. 43 considered this then began like a professor, "…I'm sure they manage somehow. Why, Tsuna's been managing ever since Mister Reborn brought him here."

Then Mr. 72 cut in harshly, "Quiet! _I hear someone coming."_

So, Spanner came out into the clearing with the two voices and stood stock still.

He mused to himself distractedly, that nothing in this place should even _begin _to surprise him and yet…Maybe it was the sheer size of the thing that had shocked him or the complete impossibility of it being here, defying several laws of physics and rationality. Spanner's usually clever mouth tried to grasp at words to describe the thing and completely failed in face of such utter _nonsense._

Spanner was an engineer, a scientist. Aside from the few facts such as witnessing a tomato become a (very sexy young) man, a(n obnoxious) man become a flock of ravens, and a fucking statue talk, there were some rules this un-reality should follow. Like physical space.

What it was, was a colossal wrought-iron chandelier on the ground, as huge as a skyscraper, and the color of soot. It was one of those older chandeliers that looked like it belonged more in a medieval torture dungeon with candle holders on a two-tiered central ring. And while the proportions were correct—it didn't add up, no matter how logical it looked. Its two tiers appeared connected as one strip but went in two completely different directions as per their status as two tiers; flat but not flat, one strip but two tiers, as if it occupied four or five dimensions all at once. In fact, it _was_ good design that just violated every known rule in dimension. It pretended logic but didn't follow common sense. It made Spanner's eyes ache just trying to follow the lines of its structure.

There were five lamps/candle holders to it, each the same basic shape of a round flower mum (if they _ever_ came in the volume of a full-size bedroom). The body of each lamp consisted of thousands of ash grey metallic ray florets, the same width as his arm, curving inwardly to form the cage for the empty candle nozzle. A festoon of slimmer darker curls decorated each lamp like a skirt. In between each mum, were a series of alternating chained pendulums and reversed spiked spires resting and/or digging into the cement grounds. They were connected to two central thick rings by arms like the spokes in a wheel. And then there were the cables connected to the chandelier as they hung loosely like prison chains to the ground. Spanner's eye calculated the distance and diameter of the cables and the probable percentage of him hallucinating.

Spanner took a breath. The cables were bigger than his body. And no, he wasn't hallucinating.

So why was it that nobody was here?

And maybe because Spanner was a bigger idiot than usual when it came to anything brown-headed named Tsuna, he called out, "—I can fix musicboxes."

The silence that followed was grimly oppressive and hungrily expectant at the same time. Spanner was unsure as to how an absence of sound could do that. Just to be sure, he listed his credentials with an unwavering tone, not arrogantly but as fact. Spanner knew he was a genius with anything mechanical. Everything else…sort of fell apart. It wasn't his fault food did not follow procedure in the cookbooks as easily as memory chips and copper wires did with his scribbled blueprints.

It was probably the chefs who got it wrong, anyway.

"Truly?" Mr. 72 called out.

Spanner glanced around for anything with a mouth moving. Nothing. He shrugged and called out a yeah.

"Well, I don't suppose you could help two old watch guards for a bit." Mr. 43 whined.

Still nothing. "I don't mind." Spanner said calmly.

And out of the rubble of metal and rust underneath the crushed section of the chandelier, rose two iron skeletal figures. The metal contoured into a copy of a smiling mouth, pointed nose, and slanted eyes; all of which were suspended in air, dangling from a crown of iron locks that clanged against a roll of metal shoulder blades. Their limbs were disproportionately long, their fingers sweeping the ground with small clicking noises. Their ribcages swept into a helixical pattern and inside a single long pendulum swung counterpoint to the rhythm of the musicbox. Mr. 72 looked exactly like Mr. 43.

"I am Mr. 72 and this is Mr. 43." Said one half of the pair of identical twins to Spanner.

"How nice to…meet you both. I'm—" going insane, growing crazy, breaking down, need official shrink help, "—Spanner."

Mr. 72 pointed to the bottom mum lamp and said, "Well, the musicbox is in there." Meanwhile, Mr. 43 had closed his fingers around the two fluttering bluebottles like a cage. He peered at them closer. "They're bluebottles! Look, Mr. 72. Tsunayoshi's toys have gotten loose again. All lost things must be found, you know."

"Eventually, anyway." Mr. 72 absent-mindedly added.

They followed him to the bottom mum lamp whose side gaped open. He stepped inside, with the two chattering guards, and found a small carved box lying upturned in the candle holder. It was overstuffed with toothed cogs and curlicued springs and wheels. The guards' previous attempt at fixing it was the same equivalent of shoving multivitamins and steroids and multiminerals in an alcohol cocktail for the depressed. He started picking it apart while holding a conversation with the two watching guards. "Could you let the bluebottles go? They're…well, Tsuna's lending them to me."

Mr. 43 opened his palm out and blew the bluebottles to Spanner's side. "I'm sorry about that. I didn't realize you were Tsuna's mortal."

"What do you mean by that? Isn't Tsuna human?" Spanner asked as he emptied out the extra unneeded parts.

Mr. 72 angled his head thoughtfully to the side, "You can't tell what a thing is if it's constantly lost, now can you?"

"Right. Tsunayoshi is a lostling. Under Mister Reborn's domain, you know," added Mr. 43 nodding.

"What do you mean Tsuna's lost?" said Spanner as he ran assessing eyes over the mechanism of the musicbox.

The twins looked at each other baffled then in tandem said, "He's just lost." Then they laughed and said jointly again, "But all lost things must be found. Eventually, anyway."

There wasn't anything wrong with the musicbox. At least, not visibly so. Yet it seemed to rewind by itself and replay the same tune over and over again. Maybe if he picked it apart? He began to pull out doll-like gears even as the music played on. "Well, tell me then. Have you seen any piano keys lying around?"

Mr. 72 slapped overly long fingers against his iron locks, "Now, I understand why those things were there. Mr. 43, don't you remember? Those bone-white sticks we found were piano keys."

"Ooh, is this about Mister Reborn's game then?" Mr. 43 asked. "I'll fetch them right now." He loped out of the mum, excited now.

"Mister Reborn likes his finding games. Even we, the mum keepers, must follow his rules." Mr. 72 said.

Why did the musicbox play even when the system of wheels that connected the metal comb and braille cylinder had been taken out? It was an Alice symptom then, Spanner decided. Another solution would have to be found, one not grounded in common sense. He put back the wheels, slightly annoyed his mechanical skills were useless in this instance. By the time he was done, Mr. 43 had come back, bearing five more piano keys. Mr. 72 sat down cross-legged and Mr. 43 followed suit and gestured at Spanner, "You should know the price by now."

And Spanner paid the price of one story even as the words escaped his mouth in a ghostly path. "This one was my older brother, Sid's story. He was a bit of a wild kid. He skipped classes a lot, got into fights a lot, and generally caused our mother a lot of grief. Then he came home once with a cactus in one hand and claimed that it sang to him. It was a round bulbous thing with needle-like spikes but a singing voice it did not have. No matter how much our mother or I looked at it. But Sid insisted it could sing and had sung for him in a sweet dulcet voice. Course, we humored him and nodded along. He kept it in a red pot on the living room table right next to the sunny window and called it Lilith.

Cacti are generally easy to take care of. They didn't even require much water.

Sid, being who he was, forgot about Lilith and watering her. He went off in his parties, with his friends, or with walking around the city.

And Lilith grew browner and wilted at the inattention. And Sid finally noticed and was devastated. Said he couldn't hear Lilith's voice anymore. Even when our mother tried replacing it with a different cactus that looked identical, Sid would still shake his head and say it wasn't the singing Lilith. Finally, we gave it a proper burial in the yard behind the apartment building. And Sid visited it each morning, thereafter, like some spurned lover. Or like some neglectful parent.

After some time, a small green bulb sprouted from that grave of Lilith's. And Sid's back to proclaiming that it could gurgle like a baby, this Lilith junior. He pays it extra attention now, takes extra care with it. He follows his parental duty zealously even while enduring my ribbing him about taking better care of it this time. My mother just laughs at us both."


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Not mine.

0101010

Dream but do not drown;

For the raven king with careful fingers

Search through such men's lives

For lost hidden things,

Blank souls asking that eternal question

What could they live for?

What should they live for?

Thus they lived for nothing and for no one.

Like a gardener

Plucks his weak and wilted plants, he sows them

Here, his world of dreams

Until they are found.

And some left, a second life finding them.

Some with death in hand.

But worse still, some stayed

For so long to be found that they forgot

How to be human.

Like the Mum Keepers

And the Fortune Teller, growing deeper

Roots into his world.

-Of Mr. Reborn, lord of all that's lost and hidden.

0101010

_Rightful Tithe to the Lord_

By the second Spanner had finished his story, the musicbox stopped in time with his mouth closing. His metallic audience looked at each other in knowing glances and clapped enthusiastically in thanks. Again, with the unrealistic laws of this world, Spanner thought sourly. A story had solved the mechanical failure whereas his years of experience as a genius engineer hadn't been. This place was fast becoming intolerable.

Mr. 43 then asked, "Well, how very fitting. Your brother found an exceptionally strange plant and you, yourself, are looking for one. Tell me…why do all this?" He struck his hands outward, a gesture of bafflement, "Why go to such lengths for a complete stranger?"

Spanner shrugged at him and stared straight at Mr. 43's eyes. "I finish what I start. Tsunayoshi may have come to me first but it was my choice to accept him and to give him my home and my protection. And I'll finish it." And really, it was only this conviction that kept him going, kept him grounded in a surreal wonderland…this conviction of duty to a young brown-haired tomato who had looked up at him almost like he was a god. It wasn't vanity (for he distrusted pride) nor was it love, for how could he when he had barely exchanged a bare few sentences with the sprite? Lust could happen in an instant but love took years to build like any good engineer knew with his constructions. So it was the only excuse Spanner could give, for he had taken the duty and responsibility like his older brother had.

Mr. 43 scowled. "Mr. Reborn means no harm to Tsunayoshi."

But Mr. 72 only looked thoughtful and asked, "You don't…know? Why Tsuna ran to you or why Reborn was so furious that you had stolen his hat? You really…don't know?"

The engineer could feel a slight flush rising up his neck as whenever an accusation of ignorance was pointed at him. In a slightly sheepish defense he said, "I haven't really have had the time to ask Tsunayoshi questions, what with him being an incomprehensible tomato most of the time." Still, it was a weak defense, Spanner knew.

"I suppose Mr. Reborn wouldn't have told you the truth no matter how much you pulled his feathers," mused the now calmer Mr. 43 while Mr. 72 nodded along and said, "It can't be helped. The story we'll give you is of the reason why the musicbox never ceased—"

"Didn't I say that Mr. Reborn warned us to keep mum on it?" Mr. 43 asked already irritated again.

Mr. 72 clapped a placating skeletal hand against Mr. 43's shoulder and said, "The mortal has stopped the musicbox with his tale. By the raven's own rules, he deserves to know, even if only from our own mouths."

"Oh very well." Mr. 43 shook his head and grumbled while his companion selected two piano keys from the five on the floor and handed him one. Spanner watched as they slipped it in through their ribs and flicked it lightly against the pendulums swinging inside. This time the sound was soft and sweet, reminiscent of the musicbox lullaby and it seeped into Spanner's mind like the warmth of small hands.

0101010

_Today, the child had thrown a fit. More or less, a very dreary fit that had less screaming and more crying. Reborn had dragged the tomato sprite back from his excursion into the world of men. But now at least, Tsuna had stopped and tiredly retired to the couch, curling up on it and Reborn was left to fuming against his bemused ravens._

_The child was a complete pest._

_Even on a normal basis, the child was exhausting to be with. Reborn was constantly pestered with twiddling thumbs and sloppy manners and constant sleeve tugs for attention. He could barely play any songs on the piano anymore. And now this. This, this…horrific event. He glared at the unrepentant musicbox on the piano, playing a lullaby on an unending loop. It would not stop. It could not stop. Ever since the tomato brat had seen that blond-haired mortal on that field of corn…_

_Then Tsunayoshi murmured sleepily, shivering in the dark. Reborn sighed as the idiot had kicked off his blankets again. He walked over to drag the worn comforter from the ground to cover the child…And found that it could barely cover Tsuna's ankles. He stopped and stared, slightly surprised. He thought distractedly that for mortals, this speed of growth was quite normal, especially for their extremely short lives. He tried adjusting it but finally gave up and took off his own coat to help. Dragging the worn comforter down to Tsuna's feet and covering what was left, Tsuna's arms and neck, with Reborn's coat sufficed to stop the child's trembling._

_Or should he say young man?_

_How many years had it been…? Since he'd picked up this little seed? How long…did he have?_

_Reborn rubbed his fingertips on Tsuna's hat, wondering. The edge of the hat…was already growing into the boy's skin. Cloth and skin were melding into one…It was beginning to be too long a wait. Lost things must often be found…and if they didn't… they would wish they could have died instead._

_Could he take that chance?_

_And hadn't he already? Hadn't he already intercepted in that field of corn before Tsunayoshi could rightly be found by that blond-haired brat? Hadn't he gripped fate by its neck and ripped it from Tsuna's hands by tearing his child away from the form of that dying plant, held so gingerly by a young mortal?...Because it had been a sight that had struck quick to Reborn's heart—Tsunayoshi looking with wide brown eyes up at someone else._

_Because it had always been him whom Tsuna had looked up at._

_And Reborn had gotten used to it, those soft brown eyes on him with that damning unconditional love of a child. And he had learned, oh yes, he had learned to love back, in as much as a spirit of the Old Tradition could love a human. And now, Reborn thought bitterly, now he knew first-hand the taste of selfishness, of wanting to keep someone close._

0101010

When Spanner woke up on the cold floor of the lamp, alone with five more piano keys, there was now no doubt. That image of the green threads of Tsuna's hat melting into skin…it had made him sick to his stomach. It was a certainty that he knew tasted like grey ashes…Tsunayoshi had to be found. Staying lost too long twisted people up. And even if now, Spanner knew a little of Reborn's motivations, it could not justify what he was doing. It had to be by Tsuna's choice, not anybody else's. And Spanner would make damn sure the tomato could make that decision.

Nobody else had the right to decide Tsuna's fate but Tsuna himself.

So thinking of that, Spanner took the five keys from the floor and because there were too many already in his pockets, he had to carry the new additions by hand. His usual guides, the two bluebottles, emerged from the wreckage of the lamps with a third in tow and he followed after the trio on the path leading back into the forest of strangler roots choking.

It was with rising trepidation that Spanner realized the trio of bluebottle butterflies was leading him back to the beginning, to the broken piano and the mirror surrounded by a tableau of a mock living room scattered with leaves and books. He needed five or more piano keys to be added to the fifteen in his possession. Spanner didn't think Reborn would keep the last keys as insurance of his victory. No, the raven king would never stoop so low. He most likely had something else in mind, using the last piano keys as bait. And Spanner couldn't help but think of that rhyme, _a little wicked hook in a bowl full of apples._

Then the sight of a page ripped from its book greeted him on the path. He bent down while the bluebottles spun around him in a flurry of grief.

It was a music sheet inked carefully with looping and overlapping notes. Tracing and counting them, Spanner hazarded a guess that this was the lullaby the musicbox had been set to. But why was it here? He squinted further down the dark path and saw more pages on the ground like victims of a storm. The blond hurried forward and gathered them up, following the line of destruction back to the source, the place of Reborn's piano.

Spanner stopped dead at the edge of the clearing.

Tattered pages dominated the floor, elegant scribbles now indiscernibly wet with dew. Underneath them, the books were spread out as if hurled there, their spines uncomfortably stretched wide open and their covers stained from the wet grass. The black leather couch was lying on its back, visible rips along its now-mutilated surface. The mirror too, which hung in the air, had taken a painfully large spiderweb crack on its bottom right, marring and fragmenting Spanner's reflection over and over. Only the piano had survived without any scars, if only because it was already so worn-down.

And there was no sign of Reborn or the ravens.

There wasn't much Spanner could do but pick the couch back up and gather the pages and books together into a small pile onto the upright couch. Then he slid all the piano keys but one back into their places in the gaps of the piano mouth, knowing that the order wasn't important. Of course, he came up short by seven, even counting the one he hid back into his pocket.

Because the future cast a brooding shadow through the gap at the bottom of a closed door and Spanner was careful to take heed.

Spanner turned back to the bluebottles but found them on the floor of leaves, curled up in death. He tried to pick them up but they crumbled into a fine white dust when he touched them. So for the last seven, he would have no one to rely on but himself.

The chill of loneliness pierced through and Spanner found himself humming frenetically along to the measure of the musicbox lullaby that kept pace with his frantic breathing. Unbidden, like secrets wanting to be told, the words of the lullaby sprang from his mouth and Spanner began murmuring, "…raven, raven; finder's keepers, losing's full of weeping…raven, raven; my skin I'll stake, blood on pins and needles…" Over and over the words poured out of his mouth in a thin drizzling smoke, drifting low on the ground. Goosebumps began appearing on Spanner's arms and neck as the temperature dropped fifteen degrees. Then more words surged out as Spanner could only watch horrified as his voice echoed around the clearing, "…raven, raven; your prize I'll thieve from you—"

Slick pointed claws pressed into Spanner's vibrating throat and his mouth immediately stopped, halting the flow of the words. Reborn answered him in an ominously quiet voice, "You have a lot of nerve to come before me short of seven piano keys." Around them, the fog had risen to swallow even the tops and tips of the strangler trees enough that colors began to fade into grey.

Thinking quickly, Spanner remembered the three bluebottles that had died in this clearing. "—You have the last seven." He was sure now, where they were just as he had known what words to challenge Reborn from before.

The claws squeezed once then let go while Reborn replied, "Oh? Well, why don't you show me where I am hiding them?"

Spanner jerked around and slammed one fist holding a smooth bleached piano key upward into Reborn's abdomen. It hit with pin-point precision as feather-shaped ridges sprouted over Reborn's neck and face and clothes as he crouched on the ground, coughing and hacking. The whites of his eyes bled black from the pupils inside and out. But it was the triumphant grin on his pale blue lips that unnerved Spanner.

Like bone sticking out of a fresh wound, one perfectly symmetrical piano key emerged from Reborn's mouth. Then another. Another. His throat bulged unnaturally like he was choking as the keys fell out of his mouth and then Reborn spat out four more. All seven piano keys spotted with black blood.

"You've drawn blood from me, mortal." The raven king straightened up, the rough ridges lengthening into the blue-black feathers. "By all intents and purposes, you have forfeited the game and your life."

With unbelievable speed that Spanner still could not see, Reborn had grasped him by the neck and was strangling him like before. The lightheaded feeling of déjà vu snaked across Spanner's mind as he could feel his blood waning, his breath gasping in small bursts. He could faintly hear the sound of paper crumpling and the leaves whispering raven raven, finder's keepers.

Reborn's face contorted in an ugly grimace, teeth flecked with blood growing longer and longer into ever sharper needles and pins. He clicked his teeth, a shudder-inducing call. From the pile of ripped pages exploded layers and layers of angular archaic letters, box-like with the sound and smell of feathers. The black gothic letters flew in the air and melded with Reborn's skin, following the dip of his muscles, overflowing through into Spanner's own throat. Reborn dug his fingers further in, increasing the force of letters. "Before, you were protected by Tsuna and then by your words of challenge from my claws. But if I rip your tongue out, you certainly can't use your words now can you?"

The strange inked words formed a thin ring around Spanner's neck and arrows and arrows of more words pointed up to his face. The ring of arrows circled around and around, cinching tighter and tighter.

Spanner couldn't even lift his arms anymore in protest as his throat throbbed in dull pain as fatigue from lack of oxygen began to set in.

The raven continued, "I admit, you came far...farther than even I would have suspected. The amount of time you have been in here, I thought, would be enough to poison you." Enough to grow the smallest of roots in the world. But Reborn was more wary now. Spanner was…a mortal who knew where he was, knew where he was going, and knew where he had come from. His conviction had been hammered over and over with his own stories and words, repeating them like religious chants that gave power with each retelling. And that iron certainty had protected Spanner like armor from the poison. It was the oldest and simplest of magic, one that even disquieted Reborn, one that was only found in some humans. Spanner was unlike them, the denizens of Reborn's world.

Better if Reborn ended this personally, by blood and fire stolen.

The collar of words stopped and sunk in, blurring into interlocking eternal knots.

Spanner's resolve wavered and he inhaled his last breathe as his body shut down.

_This was it._

_This was the end._

_The end of everything._

_In that moment of last seconds, of last breaths before death, Spanner paused and watched. He watched the gleam of low regret in Reborn's eyes, watched the whizzing words slow down to a crawl, watched the fog of the lullaby reach up to swallow the mirror, watched the cracks in said mirror grow larger and longer. And he could have sworn that he had seen two bloodied fists hitting the insides of the mirror, repeatedly disappearing in the fog then reappearing like ghosts to bang into the surface of the mirror, rippling the surface with concentric vibrations from the impact._

_Then for a moment, he thought he saw Tsuna's face in the reflection of the fog, wearing a strange look of stricken desperation. Then it dropped out of sight._

_He must be imagining it. After all, Tsuna was not that kind of person to defy Reborn, to stand up for himself. That was why Spanner had come here, hadn't he? To make sure Tsuna learned how to decide for himself, how to live on his own will._

_But this was it._

_Spanner was dying._

_But…wasn't Tsuna depending on him? If he died now, he would fail that trust. If he was careless enough to let go now, he would be disgracing all the stories he'd said about taking responsibility—_the words tangled more like a torque of roots round and round—_but he was tired, so very tired. What was the point anyway? Why was he fighting so hard again? What was he fighting for…? Why not just lie down and die…? Life would end pretty soon anyway. Better to skip ahead, he reasoned with a slightly puzzled look. This…didn't sound like him—_more words sprouted like strangler roots to choke and snuff what spark of life there was—_better to skip all the tragedies and follies of life and just die. Wasn't it? After all, all endings were the same…in death. Then die, Spanner thought. Just die right now. Stop dilly-dallying._

_Then the cracks grew to spread even to the edges of the frame of the mirror._

_Spanner exhaled his last rasping breath and then his world turned pitch dark and he could hear the trail of words that glittered like steel, "—that's enough, Reborn. No more."_

0101010

Spanner blinked awake, his neck uncomfortably sore at a strange angle next to his keyboard. He sat up, wiped the drool from his chin and looked around. The morning light had crept in the office and his cubicle had been in the way, blinding him. He winced at the direct sunlight. He cricked his neck and stretched aching arms over his head and knocked over a tomato next to him, part of his lunch the damn doctor had been demanding. There was something—something he had to do, hadn't he…?

He stared at his screensaver of flying ravens, a sense of having misplaced something drowning him.

Something rapped his head.

Brown eyes smiled at him. It was Shoichi who smiled worriedly at him. "Overworking yourself again?" He picked up the tomato and bit into it then mock gagged. "Bleh. Vegetables. I don't know how you can stick to your doctor's diet."

Automatically, he said, "It's not a diet." Tomatoes…Spanner didn't even like tomatoes. Why did he have one, really? Then strange words tumbled out, "Where's Tsuna?"

Shoichi rose an eyebrow at him. "Tuna? I don't have any tuna on me. You can find some in the cafeteria. I keep telling you to stop overworking yourself into sleep in the office. Do it at home. I mean, the guards have already been complaining to me already. And then you have the audacity to have weird dreams while you're at it and you shove it at me to psychoanalyze. Like yesterday and that dream of the cute brunet running around in your apartment building…"

Then Spanner unfurled his fingers from a single piano key from under his desk, hiding it from his co-worker's view. Then their other co-workers arrived with Shoichi wandering off to say good morning to the others. Spanner looked down and slid a finger against the fine surface of the ivory. "—hospital. He was in the hospital. The Fortune Teller had shown me, hadn't she?" Spanner's eyes glazed as he desperately clutched at the remnants of his memories. He whirled on his computer and opened up several tracking programs, intent on finding a hospital near an orphanage.

After a few more minutes, he added strangler trees as a marker to help him find it.

Then he ditched his work and took off.

0101010

He'd concocted some strange story of his father knowing Tsuna's dead father and had shown his ID and then he was escorted to room 303 where he was left alone. And there was Tsuna sleeping on the hospital bed, looking a little younger than Spanner.

He'd been bundled tight in disinfected blankets, lying rigidly like a corpse. Only his pale bony wrist laid beside him outside of the covers as it was connected to a long clear line to a medicinal packet on a stand. The walls were glaringly white and even the sides and corners of the room faded into the white haziness as the steady slow beat of Tsuna's heart beeped monotonously in the background.

Spanner stumbled forwards, feeling his own face blanch.

The questions and worries and doubts slipped under the door he'd ignored and forgot and they came fleetingly like the flashes of a broken reel film. That dream from the Fortune Teller where Tsuna had fallen asleep in the hospital, bandages wrapped around his head in winding strips—he'd suspected but had never followed—that thread of thought, unsure of how to cope…Permanent damage? No, no it couldn't be. It hadn't looked that serious, from what he could remember. But Tsunayoshi—in the hospital this long? He'd been young from the first dream…and now…

This had been the gift of deep slumber, the dream of a second life. And it was also the price.

Spanner could feel his own throat closing up.

No, pull yourself up, Sid's voice whispered. There are things you can do. Things you can keep doing. Things you have to do. It's called duty. And what was duty but love and devotion for someone? Spanner grabbed Tsuna's hand, tremors making him unsteady. "…Tsuna? Wake up, Tsuna. Wake up."

The hand was dead in his grasp.

With crazed determination, Spanner began humming the lullaby because the words had already slipped away.

Again and again, he hummed the measure of the notes like a prayer. And still nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. What was he doing wrong? A frustrated sob broke free. Spanner pressed his clammy forehead against Tsuna's bony shoulder, exhausted. This was the end, he thought.

Deathly pale fingers twitched in his hold and curled around his own fingers, pulling him back from the edge.

Spanner felt his smile stretch so far to his ears through blurred eyes. It would be the end of tragic things and the beginning of something new.

0101010

Tsuna had recovered gradually, keeping awake for a few minutes then for a few hours. He'd undergone several therapies to overcome muscle dystrophy and depression and disorientation. He could walk now but got tired quickly and today, he was being released from the hospital in a wheel-chair being pushed by Spanner. All the kind nurses had said goodbye, teary-eyed and gossiping how it was so much better than their soap operas. Tsuna had smiled nervously and Spanner had smiled secretively and the nurses had blushed and squealed at the couple.

Along the road next to the strangler trees, they had stopped a long way from the hospital and the orphanage. They had both gotten out of the car and Spanner had pushed Tsuna's wheel-chair along the dirt track. Then Tsuna gave him the new fedora they'd bought and he took it and placed it on the ground next to the edge of the woods. Then Spanner took out the last piano key and dropped it into the hat.

Tsuna had reached for Spanner's hand as they stood in silence under the shadows of the strangler trees. Tsuna began, "All lost things—"

And Spanner finished, "—must be found. Eventually."

And then they gave each other mirthful looks. All lost things…even friendship. They would find Reborn again, someday. Because Spanner could understand and Tsuna could do anything with enough will.

A court of ravens had watched the proceedings and the departure of the couple and then took off in flight, the sound of wings beating in the air.

_Fin._


End file.
